


Inter Spem et Metum

by Sunevial



Series: The Followers [5]
Category: Discord Murder Party (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The Followers AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25760506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunevial/pseuds/Sunevial
Summary: In the deepest corners of the Labyrinth lies a nearly room that stretches out into infinity. It is filled with millions of colored bubbles, warbling in every color known to mankind and many besides, each containing a copy of a single memory from the Advisor.This is just one of those memories.
Series: The Followers [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869193





	Inter Spem et Metum

“You seem troubled, Arbiter.”

The young man, or what at the very least seemed to be a young man, looked up at the sound. His eyes flickered around the marble hallways, blue-green irises taking in medicinal herbs and oil-lit braziers scattered between the low couches. Bowls of fruit and bread were arranged on the tables, fresh and smelling quite appetizing. Most of the room was draped in soft purple and black fabrics, a calming and appropriate compliment to a starry sky outside the nearby windows. Curiously, though, he did not immediately see or sense the main inhabitant of this realm. 

“What would give you that impression, good lady Hecate?” he asked, calling the goddess of sorcery by name. Adjusting his simple white and gold tunic, the young man took a couple of steps around the room, opening his mind to the furthest it could possibly reach. The shape of the room started to form in his mind like a building schematic, plotting out the exact locations of every leaf and every stone and every bit of cloth until the full picture rested before his eyes. Even with such a detailed bit of magic, however, there was nothing to be found.

How curious.

“Because you’re currently standing on my ceiling, and you never do that when you’re in a good mood,” she replied. As the words floated past his ears, the shape of a woman melted out of the nearby shadows, tall and robed in fabrics that matched the rest of the room in their color and tone. Her hair was braided up and out of her face, making the skepticism all the easier to see. 

Blinking, the young man took but a second to process this before he jumped, long white hair shooting out as it was caught in the freefall generated breeze. Spinning head over heels, his sandaled feet hit on the floor with a soft thump. Again, his eyes took a trip around the room, this time aimed towards where he had just been standing. Hecate was correct; he had, in fact, been on the ceiling. The more troubling this was _he did not remember_ ending up on said ceiling. It must have been an unconscious response, otherwise he would’ve taken a seat on one of the many cushions in the room. Was he really that distracted? The answer was yes, he was absolutely that distracted, and that was enough to put a slight frown on his face.

He was getting sloppy. He wasn’t supposed to be sloppy.

“My apologies, I must not have been paying attention to my surroundings,” he said, giving a slight bow. Formalities were little needed at this point in their relationship, but he preferred to err on the side of caution. Hecate had many domains within her grasp, childbirth, crossroads, sorcery, the dead; each was a powerful source of fuel for a goddess. She was old, a daughter of the titans if the stories were to be believed, making her one of the more powerful forces within the Mediterranean. Even so, and perhaps more importantly to him, she could maintain a conversation without sounding self important every five words. To say she was a friend was entirely too generous, but she was someone who had earned his respect.

So, he bowed. The good lady deserved that at the very least.

“There is no need for apologies,” she replied, walking over to a table and pouring out two goblets of wine. With her free hand, she beckoned him over to the sitting area. “Now, tell me, what brings you here so unsettled that you’re unintentionally breaking the laws of reality?”

The young man complied with the request, taking a seat and sinking into the soft cushions. While he didn’t quite understand comfort in relation to his own shell, he could appreciate the texture of velvet and goose feathers. “Well, it’s a bit on the complicated side.”

“When it is not for you?” she asked rhetorically, handing him the goblet before lounging on her own couch. She took a sip, regal and refined as only a Greek goddess could possess. “And thankfully, time is of little consequence for either of us. So please, elaborate.”

He paused for a moment longer than he usually would, gathering his admittedly highly disjointed thoughts together into something coherent. “You better than most understand the reasons why a being such as me would be on Earth,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “I am essentially an anthropologist, except my duties extend to all aspects of humanity and not just…one particular culture at one point in time.” 

“Then it might be more accurate to say that you are a social scientist,” Hecate replied, nodding her head thoughtfully. “That does include anthropology as a discipline, but also linguistics, psychology, political science, sociology, and all other areas and branches that deal with the complexities of humankind. Not an easy task for one being.”

“Not easy, no, but not particularly impossible when time no longer becomes a limiting factor,” he said, absentmindedly swirling the wine in the goblet. “Which, ironically, is essentially becoming a problem.”

The goddess raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that humans have enough variety in their nature to keep someone like you busy for millennia more to come.”

“They do; that’s not the issue.” He took a long drink, feeling the alcohol burn the back of his throat as it went down. “Up until now, I have been recording the variations in human nature that can be found by simple observation or only minor interference on my part. From what I can gather, while all of it has been interesting to study, it is…limited in its scope.”

“How so?” she asked, sitting up and taking a draught of her own. “Good scientists would rather see minimal manipulation of their subjects, lest the results become contaminated, no?”

“That would be the ideal scenario,” he replied, fingers fidgeting with the base of the goblet. “However, there are many aspects of humanity that only are found in rare, often…shall we say, extremely harmful events. Now, I can’t say there is any shortage of human cruelty, but humans are _incredibly_ fragile. So, while one human can fall in love multiple times, making it easy for me to study different reactions and scenarios, there is only so much physical pain that someone can take before they will ultimately expire.”

Hecate’s mouth turned up in a smile. “And you also don’t want to get in even more trouble with the other immortals by ‘accidentally’ killing their subjects, making your life more difficult in the process?”

“That too!” 

She chuckled, finishing off her wine and letting the goblet float in midair. “You know, I am also considered a goddess of necromancy. I could probably see that there wasn’t too much lasting harm if things were to get out of hand.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m pretty sure that’s how both you and I make an enemy of every other death god on this planet,” the young man replied with a small smile. “So, therein lies my problem. I have something I am duty bound to study, but I can’t without making my life an absolute proverbial hell.” 

“And what happens if you don’t?”

His fingers tightened around the goblet stem. That was the question, wasn’t it? Born out of the ever churning chaos of the Abyss, his entire existence revolved around studying humanity in all its aspects. He was an Arbiter, and he researched the good and bad, the beautiful and grotesque, the mundane and the utter limits of the fantastical. In doing so, he had grown to fit that role in personality and power, exhibiting near total control over everything from his feelings to his relationship with time. 

Near was the key word there, however. As much as he liked to believe he understood every aspect of his being, there were some emotions that he never had never truly experienced. Fear, confusion, desperation, those were emotions that relied on the presence of uncertainty and on events that he could not predict. That hadn’t been a problem, because how could it be a problem when his existence was knowledge?

What happened if he gave up on the purpose of his existence simply because going forward would prove too difficult to achieve? 

If he knew the answer to that question, he wouldn’t nearly be this distracted. Because he _didn’t know_. From what limited information he possessed, he _would never know_ , because his existence was born out of chaos and uncertainty. There were a near infinite number of possibilities for his fate, and he couldn’t see their ultimate conclusion in the strings of time. He didn’t know, meaning he wouldn’t know until the event actually came to pass. 

This new surge of unpleasant emotions, a mixture of many feelings he had never experienced before, was proving educational. 

He wished he understood fear well enough to turn it off.

“Nothing pleasant,” he finally said with a grimace, settling on something that was neither a lie nor the truth. In one swig, he finished the wine, sending the empty goblet to float alongside its pair. “So, I’d rather avoid it at all possible.”

Slowly nodding her head in response, Hecate sat up and brought a finger to her chin. It was clear the goddess was considering something, though he knew better than to try and read the mind of a fellow immortal being. At best, she would notice and consider it somewhat rude. At worst, well, there were _much_ better experiments to run. “You need a break.”

“...excuse me?”

“You have a puzzle with no answers, so why dwell on what you cannot solve?” she asked, reaching over a side table and grabbing a mask. It was decorated like a skull, stark white with black trim around the sides, and it was clearly built to obscure the wearer’s face and eyes. The young man had seen it a handful of times before, though he had never asked why a goddess would need such a thing. “I was going to extend an invitation to you anyways. I think you’ll quite enjoy it, assuming you don’t mind going in disguise.”

“If you are the one providing the suggestion, I don’t see why I wouldn’t,” he replied, raising an eyebrow as he spoke. Despite his current tumultuous inner state, he was still a being who ran off of curiosity. From the light lift in her voice, it seemed she wanted to show him something he had never seen before. That prospect alone was tempting. “Though I’d like to know what ‘it’ is and why I would need to not go as myself.”

“I think you’ll figure it out soon enough,” she said with a light smile, slipping the mask onto her face. As she did, the clothes on her body drastically changed, warbling and warping until she wore a long purple gown with a star speckled black cape thrown over her shoulders. “As for the disguise, it’s not required. It is recommended, especially for those who would rather not have their affiliations revealed.”

So it was a gathering of sorts, and one where there would be beings of all kinds in attendance from her implications. A meeting of gods and immortals and things beside that had no true unifying traits. While he certainly had no fear of other immortals knowing of his existence, there were times to flaunt power and there were times to be subtle. Reaching his hands out into the air, he drew the air molecules together, rapidly recombining their atomic structure until he held a simple masquerade-style mask. He snapped his fingers, configuring the tunic into an elaborate robe before slipping the mask onto his face. “Unnecessary it may be, I’m certainly not one to turn down an opportunity for something more dramatic.”

“As to be expected, Arbiter” she replied, voice touched with amusement. She held out a hand. “Shall we?”

He graciously accepted.

The world tore. There was no better word to describe what he saw, because reality split in two as if it were made of cloth or paper. Neither of them moved as this happened, instead watching as the goddess’s demiplane fell away and vanished into nothing, because now there _was_ nothing. It was equal parts dark and light, held together with little more than red string made of emotion and severed memories onto infinity. He glanced around, eyes searching for something to break up the monotony, eventually landing on a single door that had not been there just moments ago.

Small bits of information floated past his gaze, running through the vast stores he had collected over the years. This was clearly the Void, a space between worlds, cut off from time and matter and even memory in most places. Originally home to many things with no names, there had been one who had managed to claim nearly all of it for her own, a certain murder god with no name written or recorded or spoken into the universe. It had been a feat just to get any information on this place, but it wasn’t impossible. Hardly so.

Getting here, on the other hand, was a much different story. 

Hecate opened the door and quickly pulled him inside. Empty void made way for a large room filled with vaguely humanoid figures, air filled with music and light chatter. Just about everyone in sight was dressed in fine clothes and wearing a mask or veil over their face, not that it did much to hide what was beyond those simple shells. Still, he didn’t recognize anyone inside; if he did know them, the glamours were entirely too strong for him to see through with passive magic alone.

As tempting as it was to pry further, he would rather not get immediately ejected from the Void.

Giving his hand a light squeeze, Hecate let go and walked into the crowd. Within just a few steps, she had all but vanished from sight. So, he was on his own then? Perhaps for the best in a place meant to bend the eyes away from the truth. 

In a similar fashion, he moved through the formal gowns and tailored suits, occasionally listening in on conversations or observing some of the guests. Every so often, he caught a glimpse of someone who had _not_ covered their face for the occasion: a voidling shell with starlit wings and hundreds of thousands of eyes, a bestial immortal in the form of a small human woman, a woman with a star burned between her collarbones, a graceful woman with a quill in one hand. He could hazard a guess to their identities, figures within the Murder God’s court who did not have to worry about hidden identities and strong glamours.

She had a court, then. Apparently he knew less about this place than he originally assumed.

Raucous laughter erupted from one corner of the ballroom. He followed the noise, pushing past a handful of disguised gods and craning his neck a bit past where it was supposed to naturally go. While most of the ballroom could be described as heavily congested, this corner was especially crowded, all of the various immortals gathered around a portion of the wall. It was moving, depicting a number of humans hotly debating a recent murder in their town. A moment passed before they all turned on a man, dragging him to a gallows and letting him swing. All the while, a short woman with blonde hair stood off to the side, watching the events unfold with little more than a smile and a nod.

And then it happened again. One of the humans was murdered, debate happened, and someone else was blamed. The cycle repeated over and over, the population dwindling away in an increasingly brutal set of murders until there were only two left, one of which pulled a knife and stabbed the remaining woman through the throat. A round of applause echoed through the gathered immortals, a couple of coins changed hands, and the moving picture began again.

The young man watched each one with keen eyes, almost enraptured in the unfolding carnage taking place. These events were clearly happening in real time or something close to it, and those were quite clearly humans taking part in the neverending cycle of games. Whether or not they were alive and brought back to life or simply reused souls, there was really not much of a difference; those were humans being subjected to repeated bloodshed and torture in a closed loop. There wasn’t any objection taking place from the Audience because those humans weren’t under the domain of other gods or possibly even other humans.

They were under the jurisdiction of the Murder God.

Well. Under the jurisdiction of the Murder God and her Followers.

The game came to a close to thunderous applause and the wall going blank. Nodding their heads in approval, the various masked dancers and guests wandered off to other portions of the ballroom. As the crowd split, the young man caught a glimpse of Hecate, standing just apart from the rest of the activity. Though he could not see her face, he knew she was smiling behind the porcelain mask.

“Are you enjoying your break?” she asked, voice carrying over the crowd just enough to hit his ears.

He gave a pleasant smile in return, bowing just a bit at the waist. “As much as I am, I do fear it may have to end…sooner than anticipated,” he replied in the same manner, soft and directed enough that only she would hear. “But it has been much appreciated, good lady of sorcery and crossroads.”

“Do come and visit some time, Abysswalker,” she said, letting the unspoken understanding fall between them like a curtain. With a nod serious in its finality, she turned away, melting into the sea of bodies as if she had never had any presence in this place.

He didn’t have to look through time to know it would be a long time before the two of them drank together again.

“You know, I didn’t think Hecate was one to bring guests,” Murder God said, stepping next to him and glancing up. “She usually prefers people not knowing she comes and watches my little show every so often.”

The young man chuckled, leaning back on one of the nearby pillars. “Then I suppose I should count myself lucky.”

“Do you want to drag this out with small talk or just cut right to the chase?” she asked, eyes glowing golden as the noise of the ongoing party seemed to fall away until it was just the two of them side by side. “Because I don’t particularly care how long this goes.”

“What a coincidence, neither do I,” he said with a halfhearted smile. “So, by that tone, I’m guessing you already know what I want.”

She smiled sweetly, flippantly gesturing with one ink stained hand. “See, this is what’s so nice about working with immortals. I don’t have to explain any of the magic, everything is understood, I don’t have to give you any extra powers. We just have to agree on the terms.”

He thought for a moment, dredging up any current or future concerns he might have with taking this course of action. There were a handful he could see, specifically the ones illustrating what might happen if he _were_ to tie himself to such a grand story and the powers of the Void. The new duties he would have to perform, the harm that he would have to willingly be done to his shell, the people he would have to work with, each was a clear possibility that he could anticipate and see through time.

Whether or not he liked them all, he knew what to expect. That was more than he could say at the moment.

“I suppose all I would want is assurance I can continue with my studies of humanity unimpeded by your demands of me,” he finally said, taking off the mask and sticking it into one of his pockets. “Otherwise I would have few true objections to anything you would require, including taking a name I almost never use.”

Her grin widened, and the Void flashed golden. “And what would that be?”

He spoke a word in a language never once heard by human ears.

“Hm, yeah, that’s not going to work,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and tapping her foot against the strings. “How does Advisor sound?”

The desperation and fear drained from his mind, replaced with a much more familiar and burning interest in whatever was about to happen next.

“Absolutely _delightful_ , my dear Captain.”


End file.
